POT ROCKERS

But The Black Crowes May Be Trying To Shed Their Pro-Dope Image

We offered the Black Crowes one kilo of high-grade Alberta marijuana
in exchange for an interview - and they laughed.

Of course the band itself didn't laugh. When you're in show business,
you hire people to laugh on your behalf. Word has it that another
reporter in Canada seriously tried to bribe the Crowes into an
interview by offer of a lovely handmade bong, but that was turned
down, too. Just as well. We don't want to get into the habit of
buying interviews, even with drugs, which, it should be mentioned at
this point, is illegal.

The band plays tomorrow at the Jubilee Auditorium.

But the point has been made, no? The Black Crowes remains one of the
top "pro-pot" rock bands in the world. This is not the same as
"stoner" rock - referring to a band whose music, if not the musicians
themselves, tends to promote marijuana use - though you can be both.
The Black Crowes may be both.

How did they get this reputation? Very few Crowes songs deal with the
joys of smoking joints. Soul Singing, from the band's most recent
studio album, Lions, contains this line, "We'll get high and we'll
feel safe and sound" - and that's as obvious it gets in an oeuvre
that mainly explores sweet, sweet love or loss thereof. And yet,
cough, cough, here we are in a smoke-filled hall with 1,000 more
joints timed to light with the words, "Hey little thing, lemme light
yer candle."

MARIJUANA SOURCE

For insight into the unsurprisingly large pop culture nexus between
rock 'n' roll and marijuana, there is no better source than Steve
Bloom, longtime editor of High Times magazine, the bible of marijuana
culture for more than 30 years.

"Most rock bands smoke pot," he observes. "The question is how up
front the band is going to be about it."

The Black Crowes were upfront about it. Getting on the cover of the
July 1992 issue of High Times was just one part of the reefer-related
promotion for The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion album. They
played the Atlanta Pot Festival. They unfurled pot leaf banners at
concerts. Singer Chris Robinson showed up at the MTV Awards in pot
leaf trousers.

"I would say that those are the four things that put them out there
as the poster band for marijuana," Bloom says.

The Crowes wanted to be on the cover of High Times.

Bloom recalls, "They flew me down to Georgia on their tab and took me
over to Chris's home and I did the interview with Chris and Eddie
Harsh, the keyboard player. We smoked some joints and then we did a
big interview. I remember a very informal, easygoing time. Chris was
super-friendly. He let me go through his music collection to see what
he was into. His house was all dressed up in Moroccan decor, nice
rugs and wall hangings and stuff. He obviously had good taste."

Robinson also allegedly had a taste for stronger stuff than pot.
Bloom figures this is why he was shut out after getting along so
almost famously with the Crowes - breaking the Lester Bangs rule of
never making friends with the rock stars. Moreover, once the band was
established as the media marijuana kings, the drawback became
obvious. It's a heat score. Two narcs reportedly tried to infiltrate
the band's dressing room at a concert in Kentucky, which led to a
fight, arrests and the cancellation of the show. They played it a lot
cooler with the press after that.

"I always felt that the incident in Kentucky was the reason he
decided to step away," Bloom says, "And secondly because of the use
of other drugs. It wasn't just about marijuana any longer. He wanted
to close the door on any other media discussion of that as Chris got
thinner and looked a little junkie-ish."

Whether or not pot is a "gateway" to harder drugs only because it's
illegal is an argument best left to another time, but Robinson
eventually cleaned up his act.

In a 1999 interview with the Toronto Sun, he said, "I see pictures of
myself from just a couple of years ago, and I'm like, 'Who was that?'
I looked like I was 60 years old ... Now I can look back and go,
'Well, I enjoyed psychedelics, but I don't have to be tripping all
day, every day, for months on end,' which I found myself doing.
Eventually, you wake up and you're like, 'Wow, I need to stop
hallucinating today.' "

The singer continued to display the pot leaf motif in clothing and
promotional artwork, but he was not sharing tokes with any more
journalists. In 2000, Robinson married actress Kate Hudson and they
had a son in 2004. He hasn't said boo about getting high since. He
hasn't said much of anything. There was little explanation over the
band's breakup in 2002, not much on Robinson's solo album, New Earth
Mud - launched without management or record label or, needless to
say, media publicists - and very little on the reunion that brings
the band back to Edmonton. There is still no label, no interviews
being granted (which is why journalists must resort to interviewing
each other) and for this tour a complete ban on concert reviewers.

Bloom in particular feels like he got burned.

"They still take the pro-pot stance, they're still using the pot
leaf. Hello? You're still advocating and High Times is asking for
tickets and you can't give one?"

DENYING THE PAST

Perhaps a media blackout is just the Crowes' attempt to shed its
pot-band image, though they started it and may now find it impossible
to get away from. Articles like this certainly don't help.

In some ways, it's like the Christian rock star gone secular - yet
still wearing a crucifix as discretely as tokers wear their pot leaf
pins - only to face unending questions about having once been a
Christian rock star.

Which leaves us where? Is it still cool to be a pro-pot band? Bloom
says yes, but then he would. Who are the reefer rock superstars of
today? The answer may surprise you.

"You're from Western Canada, right?" asks Bloom. "We've featured
Nickelback. They sent in a great picture of Chad (Kroeger) in the
studio with a huge amount of marijuana spread out on the engineering
board - green, sticky buds. It must've been at least a pound."

So Nickelback takes the smouldering torch from the Black Crowes? What a world.